At The Bitter End
by Levity Lirum
Summary: Voldemort knew he was missing something as he regarded the woman in the green Basalisk-skin dress. Then she took off her sunglasses and he suddenly realised why he would be a fool to try and take the boy from her. Mia Lars. Lars Mia. La Mia. Lamia.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do own Mia Lars.**

Just a random story that popped into my head. Its a mix of Harry turning into a snake hybrid and Harry being adopted.

There is mildly graphic desciptions of child murder, abuse and negligence. Read footnote for further information as to why.

* * *

There was an old stone house three blocks from the Dursley residence.

It was a two story building that was once a church, but had been renovated several years ago. There was a bell in the bell tower, the roof slates and granite walls were clear of lichen and moss, the grass was almost always ankle-length and new-grass-green, the gardens were full of wildflowers and herbs and the yards was fenced in by a patchy white picket fence.

The owner of the house was a wealthy young woman with long, loose chestnut hair and eyes always hidden by a large sunhat and glasses. She was quite fond of long cotton sundresses in late spring and summer, but was rarely seen from mid autumn to spring.

Mia Lars had moved in when Harry was four, and almost immediately became a gossip sensation in Surrey. At only twenty-four, the wealthy heiress was a part-time model, occasional theatre actress and operetta, and a genius at the stock market.

She also went through men like most women went through a box of chocolates.

The children and some adults called her a witch.

Harry, for his part, quite liked her. She always smiled at him whenever she saw him when he passed her house on the way to school. Sometimes she would give him a lolly and a pat on the head. And, most of all, she let him hide in her yard from Dudley's gang during 'games' of Harry Hunting.

Harry barely noticed that she couldn't stand any other children and was coldly snide to most other adults.

He only noticed that every so often one of Dudley's little gang would go missing because the police often came to question Dudley about their disappearances.

It was during one of these disappearances when Harry was nine that his life changed.

_**(space)**_

Chief Investigator Joseph 'Joe' Morelli had been part of the unit dispatched to investigate the disappearances of no less than seven little boys since the first boy, Piers Polkiss, was taken during recess at school three years ago.

According to the other children, he had been Dudley Dursley's best friend.

Joe had known, the moment Petunia Dursley had opened the door and paled slightly, that something was very wrong with that family. That feeling had only gotten worse when he had met Vernon and Dudley Dursley.

Vernon Dursley was a bully of a man with some anti-social tendancies and in dire need of anger-management classes.

Dudley Dursley, however, despite his young age, was a bonafida baby sociopath. Joe had made a note to Child Services to keep an eye out for the boy.

It was only as he and his partner had been speaking to the older sibling of the third boy that they even found out that there was a fourth person living at the Dursley residence.

A though questioning of the girl had revealed that young Harry was violently bullied by his cousin at school and that it was common knowledge that there was something 'off' about the boy.

Research and inquires at Social Services showed that Harry James Potter had been reported dead with his parents in an unsolved homicide case several years ago, there was no paperwork at all of young Harry's guardianship transfer to his aunt, and there were fifteen uninvestigated reports of suspected child abuse and neglect from four school nurses (all of whom had been dismissed within a week of the report being made), three from a previously abused foster-home teenager who had been rendered comatosed in an unwitnessed attack, an elderly man who suffered a heart attack a month later and seven from a young woman who lived several blocks away on Harry's route to school.

The young woman, a Mia Lars, was quite influential in some social circles, and had actually approached Joe and his partner, Daniel, and told them to look into reports of child abuse in regards to Harry, and to be very discreet in doing so.

Apparently, she had had three potentially fatal car accidents, an arson-lit fire that she had caught in time to stop damage to her house and had then borrowed her cousin's guard dog, Loki. Loki had set off the alarm three times for attempted break-ins and had actually mauled the person who got in, but got away.

During this time, three more boys went missing.

The case was clear. All the boys had been friends with Dudley Dursley, had violently bullied the elusive Harry Potter, and had all been kidnapped and probably killed in likely defence of said little boy.

And someone else was willing to kill to keep Harry in a potentially abusive household.

Then the kidnapper slipped up.

The body of the seventh boy, Borius Landon, was found by a cadaver dog the night the boy went missing.

He'd been hung from a tree in a construction site near the school with meat-hooks through his shoulders, partially disembowelled and skinned from the neck down. The coroner noted that the boy couldn't have screamed as his vocal cords had been neatly severed without killing him. The shock had done that.

The boy had been alive and probably aware when the killer started to butcher him.

The butchering had also been interrupted, from what the coroner could tell, and the killer had just left the body for the police to find several hours later.

Several theories about why the killer had abandoned his prey were thrown around until Joe had gotten a call from Mia Lars that she had answered a knock at her door to find Harry laid out unconscious and bloody on her doorstep and immediately rushed the boy to hospital.

The investigators turned up to find that Harry was in ER with life-threatening internal bleeding, rib and spinal fractures, and other damages that would take at least twelve hours in surgery before they could even consider the boy near safe. When the first doctor had come out on rotation from the surgery, she had promptly told the investigators to arrest the boy's guardians.

Aside from the long term damage sustained, the poor boy had woken up mid-surgery, delirious, and babbled to 'Aunt Petunia' that he'd get dinner done right away, even trying to get up.

Mia Lars had had to be sedated and was passed out on a bed in the nurses breakroom, clad in scrubs while her bloodstained dress was bagged and given to the police.

Six months later, the Dursley's were sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for kidnapping, child abuse, child neglect, fraudulence, child slavery, attempted murder resulting in grievous bodily harm, three accounts of assaulting an officer of the law and seven cases of contempt of court.

No one could have saved the Dursleys as it hit the media the next morning.

During this time, another case was opened to determine who had participated in Harry's kidnapping and why he had been declared dead.

Ever after, Joes could never forget the first time he saw Mia Lars' eyes without the prescription sunglasses. It had been the day that she had finally managed to legally adopted Harry Potter, who trusted no one living, adult or child, except Mia and the person he called Loncha, whom they suspected was the killer.

Her eyes, her brilliant, kaleidoscopic golden eyes, had slit pupils like a snake.

As it turns out, at the very end of his long life, they would also be one of the last things Joe ever saw.

* * *

Mia Lars.

Lars Mia

La Mia

Lamia.

I thought of that one myself as I was about to conk out last night whilst thinking of this. :3

Definition from Wikipedia:

In ancient Greek mythology, **Lamia** (Greek: Λάμια) was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon. While the word _lamia_ literally means "large shark" in Greek, Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet (λαιμός; _laimos_), referring to her habit of devouring children.

Some accounts say she has a serpent's tail below the waist. This popular description of her is largely due to _Lamia_, a poem by John Keats published in 1819. Antoninus Liberalis uses Lamia as an alternate name for the serpentine drakaina Sybaris. However, Diodorus Siculus describes her as having nothing more than a distorted face.

Later traditions referred to many _lamiae_; these were folkloric monsters similar to vampires and succubi that seduced young men and then fed on their blood.

According to Diodorus Siculus, Lamia was born the beautiful daughter of King Belus of Egypt, making her the granddaughter of Poseidon and Lybie. Upon her father's death she became queen of one of his territories, Libya. However, while visiting Delphi, Pausanias remarks that Lamia was the _daughter_ of Poseidon. He also states that Lamia and Zeus were the parents of Herophile, a noted sibyl.

Diodorus goes on to relate that Lamia had an affair with Zeus and bore him children. When Hera, Zeus's wife, discovered the affair, she became enraged and killed the children. Driven insane with grief, Lamia began devouring other children, and, according to Diodorus, her face became hideously distorted from her grisly deeds.

Zeus then gave her the ability to remove her eyes. In Diodorus the purpose of this is unclear, but other versions state this came with the gift of prophecy. Zeus did this to appease Lamia in her grief over the loss of her children.

Later stories state that Lamia was cursed with the inability to close her eyes so that she would always obsess over the image of her dead children. Some accounts (such as that of Horace, below) say that Hera forced Lamia to devour her own children. Myths variously describe Lamia's monstrous (occasionally serpentine) appearance as a result of either Hera's wrath, the pain of grief, the madness that drove her to murder, or - in some rare versions - a natural result of being Hecate's daughter.

Horace, in _Ars Poetica_ (l.340) imagines the impossibility of retrieving the living children she has eaten:

_Neu pranse Lamiae vivum puerum extrabat alvo._

Alexander Pope translates the line:

Shall Lamia in our sight her sons devour,

and give them back alive the self-same hour?

**In case you didn't get that, Mia Lars is a Lamia who has the power of prophecy, knows Harry is a Parselmouth and had been killing and eating the children who hurt him. She couldn't get to the Dusley's because of the wards.**

**Tell me what you think. And, yes, New Divide and Hi'i Palulukan will be updated in the next week.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do own Mia Lars.**

Just a random story that popped into my head. Its a mix of Harry turning into a snake hybrid and Harry being adopted.

Computer died and I lost everything. Am currently working on getting at least My Documents back. As such, updates may take a while.

* * *

The very first thing Harry learnt at the Dursleys was; Do Not Draw An Adult's Attention.

The Second Rule was; Do Not Question.

The Third Rule was; If They Are Baring Their Teeth While Smiling, You Are In Trouble.

Many, many Rules were subconsciously ingrained into Harry as he grew while others were amended.

One of the reasons Harry began trusting Mia Lars so quickly was because she also followed the Three Primary Rules.

Still, Harry's very first friend also followed these Rules, which should have set a precedent since said 'friend' was a West African Gaboon Viper who answered to Loncha.

Harry had met Loncha when he had slid into the hole under one of the tunnels in the local playground whilst hiding from Dudley. Harry had been surprised when he'd found himself lying on a smooth, scaly object that began whispering longingly about warmth in a half-awake manner.

It had been late autumn at the time.

Harry still wasn't entirely sure how he'd managed to sneak a snake as long as Aunt Petunia was tall (and almost as round) across the road, into the house and into his cupboard without anyone noticing.

And no one noticed all winter and the winters that followed at the Dursley residence.

Except Ripper, who went mysteriously missing whilst Harry was making dinner one afternoon. The disappearance quite put Loncha off his chicken for a week or so.

Funny that.

Marge assumed that the nasty dog had been dognapped, so Harry wasn't punished.

* * *

When Harry moved in with Mia, he was very surprised to find that his room was an actual room instead of a cupboard.

It was small, which Harry liked, and was dominated by a wall to wall bunk surrounded by darkly lacquered drawers, giving the impression of a nest carved into the wall. There was no window, but Mia said that he could have anything in the storage room beside his own.

Across the wooden floorboards of the hall was Mia's room with its large black and bronze bed and gothic décor. Beside her room was the spacious bathroom with the multi-jet shower and pool-like bathtube.

The storage room beside his own was full of random tat and chests full of clothes and extra furnature. Harry had moved a bookcase, a small, old-fashioned school desk and a comfortably worn wooden chair into his room. Vibrant dark clothes were stretched over the floor and walls and the door and the drawers to muffle sound. Old fashioned toys lined the bookshelf and glittering mobiles were made with string, coat-hangers and the shiny glass and metal jewellery found in some of the chests. The end result looked something like a magpie's nest.

It was the only room in the house that Mia never entered, respecting Harry's privacy, even if it was one of the places Loncha usually frequented.

Mia didn't bother to point out that the 'glass' things were actually precious gems and the metal jewellery were more often then not several centuries old and magic in some manner.

At the end of the hall was a small rickety wooden staircase that led to a little nook between the kitchen and the library.

As upstairs, a hall of polished dark wood with a green mat divided the house through the former congregation area to the kitchen, which took up the entirety of the former dais and priest's quarters.

The kitchen was the only room with a stone floor. The room was dominated by a battle-worn old oak workbench that took up the majority of the kitchen space. Aside from the hallway door and the back door, the walls were lined with shelves of bottles and dried herbs. At the left end of the kitchen was the walk-in cool-room and freezer (Harry was not to have anything to do with the cloth-wrapped meat on the top shelves), while the right end was an old-fashioned wood-fire stove that not only was used to cook, but also warmed the entire house. Beside the stove was a trick-shelf that lead into a pantry Harry was not allowed into.

Entering from the front door, to the immediate right was a small study where Mia took care of any business for her work. The second and third doors on the right led into the library which stretched to the stairway.

On the left was the parlour where guests were entertained. The second door lead to a small water-closet. The third on the left was the loungeroom where Harry spent much of his day doing his home-schooling and reading. It also housed a large shaggy black dog that stared around with luminous blue eyes and never made a sound.

Mia called the dog, with a ironic little smile, Grim.

Grim would often haunt the small cemetery at the far back of the yard, closed off by iron pickets and shaded by a gnarled old yew tree.

Loncha and Grim had a live-and-let-live accord, though occasionally the lazy viper would complained about the 'Rainbow Queen' eating the rabbits in the hutch in the back corner that were kept expressly for him.

Aside from the odd bowel of milk, Grim didn't eat anything.

* * *

As part of the agreement with the courts, Harry saw a psychologist twice a week.

Her name was Dr S. Theno, and she was an old friend of Mia's.

Dr Theno was Greek, but she always wore her hair in a wrap that Harry could have sworn moved sometimes, her long nailed were shiny bronze and she wore contact lenses like Mia did sometimes.

For all that she was odd, Harry liked her. She felt like Mia and Loncha did.

It was a mark in her favour that she had shown him her statues of people doing silly things. Apparently, she made them herself.

* * *

Mr Morelli wasn't like Mia and Loncha and Dr Theno, but Harry liked him, even if the man asked a lot of questions.

He had a warm smile that didn't show teeth when he dropped by to check on them every few days, he always brought Harry sometime sweet and he had a big yellow dog called Bob.

Mia had confessed that she liked Mr Morelli, too, but that she hadn't yet decided if she was going to keep him.

Harry didn't find anything odd about this comment.

* * *

One of the first things Mia had told Harry was that if ever the clear crystal balls in every room and the yard began glowing red and chiming, he was to go immediately to the basement, regardless of what he was doing at the time.

The basement doors were hidden in three locations around the house and yard; the first was in the kitchen beneath the table under a false sandstone block, the second was in the upstairs bathroom behind a false wall, down a slide-pole, and the third was hidden under a hollow stone toad by the water feature in the enclosed back corner of the yard.

As soon as Harry was in the basement, which had candles, a small cot, a telephone, dried food and a toilet and sink, he was to hit the button on the wall, which would both lockdown the room and send out an alarm.

Only Mia had the password and only Mr Morelli and Dr Theno were shown where the entrances were.

In the first year of his stay with Mia, Harry and Loncha dutifully went down to the basement twenty-seven times, though the intruders were always gone when the police arrived, and Mia was never home when it happened; usually having run down to the store for something.

The day Harry reached his eleventh birthday, he had just sat down to breakfast while Mia read the newspaper and drank her tea, Loncha draped over his bare feet for warmth, when Mia had suddenly looked up and glared in the direction of the front door with her beautiful golden eyes.

The swing and snap of the mail-slot reached Harry's ears, but he remained in his seat when Mia stood and disappeared from the kitchen.

The boy did, however, lean back slightly to look down the hall when he heard the angry hiss-sound like Loncha made when he was greatly irritated reached his ears.

Loncha, for his part, made a break for the catflap Mia had had installed for him in the kitchen door.

Mia stalked into the kitchen a few moments later, muttering vehemently in both a foreign language and snake-speak, and added several herbs from the top shelf of the red shelves to the stove fire, a letter clutched in her hand.

When the herbs caught alight, the flames flared a dark violet and let loose as strong scent Harry couldn't recognise.

Then the woman cast the letter into the flames.

A moment passed before the letter let out a shriek, the violet flames suddenly taking on the appearance of a nest of purple firedrakes that snakes and hissed as an orange-ish light tried to escape the flames, but was torn apart by the voracious little apparations.

Mia hissed in a smugly hostile manner at the fire before turning to Harry. "Go get dressed. We will be making a trip to London to talk with some people about your schooling."

Harry frowned but nodded, wondering why they needed to talk about schooling. He was doing well with his home-schooled courses. He was even ahead in most subjects.

* * *

Stheno was one of the immortal Gorgan sisters of Medusa. It never said what happened to her and the other sister whose name I can't remember.

Joe Morelli is loosely based off a character belonging to Janet Evanovich.

Loncha is a West African Gaboon Viper. They are the larges of the viperids, have both the longest fangs (2inches) and the highest venom yeild of any snake. They are also supposed to be quite placid compared to other snakes. They are also HUGE. Look it up and see for yourself.

Loncha is the Shikamaru of snakes.


End file.
